Overview: Bluesky and the ATmosphere
The ATmosphere is the information ecosystem based on ATproto, the protocol developed by and for Bluesky. More interconnected apps are emerging. The potential for better online conversations is profound... if adequate revenue streams can be confirmed.
(last edit: February 2025)
Just as Mastodon is on the Fediverse, an information ecosystem where it and other apps can interact using the ActivityPub protocol, the Bluesky protocol (ATproto) underpins the ATmosphere ecosystem. In 2025, I'm betting that this is the most promising ground for #AI4communities.
Origins: Bluesky
ATproto was originally going to underpin Twitter before Elon Musk bought it. Moreover, when the Bluesky team then spun off from Twitter, they decided to keep many things unchanged, making the transition easier for people fleeing X.
The result looked and felt so similar that many people didn't spot how the open, permissionless nature of this new environment set Bluesky apart. Some key Bluesky features include:
- Custom feeds, each a subset of the Bluesky firehose, tuned to a particular community's interests and moderation preferences, created by anyone using a variety of 3rd party tools (see Bluesky custom feeds) and usable by anyone by simply pinning the feed to their interface
- Labellers apply labels to accounts - like custom feeds, anyone can create one, using a variety of tools, and anyone can subscribe to them if they want to see the label
- Block/mute lists are a sort of labeller: subscribe to one and you'll never see content from anyone on the list in your timeline
- Starter packs package a list of up to 150 people and (optionally) custom feeds relevant to a particular topic, and provide a feed of the people's posts.
- 3rd party apps: you don't need to use the official Bluesky app - there are many others, and because the ATmosphere is permissionless they won't go the way of Tweetdeck.
Enter the ATmosphere
The ATmophere is a permissionless ecosystem - anyone can build anything they like, and can access the Bluesky feed, without having to get Bluesky Social PBC's permission.
So, like Mastodon, Bluesky is not the only kid on its protocol block: in mid-2024 the Whitewind blogging platform launched, and within a few months a plethora of other apps were in beta, including Instagram- & TikTok lookalikes (all tools tagged #atproto and #tool).
Is it decentralised?
Yes, but not as decentralised as Fediverse. The key arguments in this once-fractious debate were both articulated and calmed by two protocol engineers: Christine Lemmer-Webber (ActivityPub co-author) and Bryan Newbold of Bluesky, who exchanged three enormous blog posts. After reading, annotating and generally struggling through all three (and more), I came out with a few conclusions (paraphrased from my newsletter from December 2024 and January 2025):
- There are different degrees of decentralisation, and different ways to get there. A comparison between the relatively mature Fediverse and Bluesky, with its brand-new protocol, is therefore tricky, particularly as Bluesky is focusing first and foremost on providing an X-like experience as possible for everyone fleeing X, which required certain choices to be made.
- There are too many blog posts, not enough wikis - someone should lock these two in a room somewhere until they come up with a text they both agree on
- I hope this protocol competition will evolve until the two spaces complement each other, as:
- ATProto's shared-heap model structurally favours few servers, "and thus has a natural centralizing force"
- ActivityPub has an incentive to keep the average followers/user low.
- the Fediverse will therefore probably remain a good place for cozyweb spaces, and co-exist with more global conversations on the more centralised and business-like ATmosphere.
- The world needs both.
What does the ATmosphere represent?
I first saw this when I published my December newsletter, and an extract from it as a stand-alone post, on Whitewind (see everything I Do or Think tagged #Whitewind).
When you sign up to blog on Whitewind, you use your Bluesky ID, and your blog posts live in your Bluesky Personal Data Store. So it's your content, and if Whitewind disappears, you can take it with you to another provider (or build your own), and all of your links keep working. Whitewind doesn't own you. You own you.
Moreover, there's "seamless comments integration with BlueSky: a comment posted to the blog is shared on the commenter's Bluesky account, and whenever someone shares the post on Bluesky it also appears under the post" - Thinking transparently in the ATmosphere.
The code for that integration is freely available, so this has massive implications for website-based communities, among other things.
One of those other things is #ai4communities, which was originally more Fediverse-oriented when I first started articulating it in January 2023. In 2024 I began revisiting it on my experimental wiki with a "technology-agnostic" post accompanied by sub-pages exploring how it would look on the Fediverse, the ATmosphere and (tbd) Nostr. The exercise convinced me that the ATmosphere is most promising, which is why it's been the focus of recent newsletters.
Relevant resources
whtwnd.com
"I usually circulate my newsletter to its subscribers via Mailchimp before reposting it to Medium for my subscribers there. However, for this edition I posted this content from Obsidian, my notemaking tool, direct to Bluesky's Atmosphere. It's early days, but I think this augurs well for decentralised collective intelligence."
fediversereport.com
3 important points (for me, right now):"The two biggest labelers dedicated to content moderation have called it quits... a shift in current expectations what labelers are for. Bluesky advertised labelers as a way for communities to help protect themselves, calling ‘community labeling’. The situation ... has shown that labelers that are a hig…
blueskyroast.com
"Let our AI analyze your posts, roast your takes, and reveal what your posting history says about you".Honestly not roasty at all - rather hagiographic, judging by mine, but who am I to argue with a 88% authenticity score, even if I have no idea how that is measured? https://blueskyroast.com/roast/mathewlowry.bsky.social.But a pretty coo…
progfeeds.mariozechner.at
"Analyze accounts that follow you". eg spot bots & trolls, discover followers you really should follow back, and even "Get raw JSON to do more analysis yourself"."Runs entirely on your device, without login" and - illustrating the openness of your Bluesky content - "You can analyze the followers of any accoun…
whtwnd.com
"a reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber's thoughtful ... "How decentralized is Bluesky really?", Hubbed earlier, which "raises the bar on analysis in this space. However, I disagree with some of the analysis".First, agreement with CLW's "shared heap" image, and a good summary of how Bluesky works: "atp…
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dustycloud.org
ActivityPub co-author Christine Lemmer-Webber "often get asked whether or not I have opinions about ATProto vs ActivityPub... I do ... but I am usually head-down focused on building... [and] anything I had to say on the subject would not be received productively". But, encouraged by a core Bluesky developer, here is her longread.It'…
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nws-bot.us
Does what the title says: converts a Bluesky Starter Pack into a List. Tested successfully here: https://bsky.app/profile/mathewlowry.bsky.social/post/3lbmwcewk2226
whtwnd.com
"a markdown blog service using atproto... Your article is immediately delivered to all the federated atproto services" - basically the intersection of Bluesky & Obsidian, and a key building block for myhub.Basically a platform for posting blogs onto, using your Bluesky account: your blog is simply https://whtwnd.com/{Bluesky handle o…
fediversereport.com
Taking funding from a VC firm called Blockchain Capital raised quite the furore: " a common response ... was that “the enshittification has started”.""Bluesky is aware of the negative connotations ... explicitly stating that “the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and we will not hyperfinancial…
www.youtube.com
An almost 30min video from Justin Garrison in July 2023 asking: "What is the difference between Mastodon's ActivityPub and BlueSky's AT Protocol?... We're not going to be looking at [apps] ... like Mastodon and Bluesky or Threads" - instead, a mid-level dive into the underlying protocols, and "some pros and cons of ea…
mathewlowry.medium.com
My mid November 2024 newsletter summarises how a deep dive into Bluesky has changed how I view #AI4Communities, and summarises some of the most influential things I've read recently.
Think
publicsphere,
newsletter,
collective intelligence,
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doctorow.medium.com
No one is the enshittifier of their own story
bsky.social
Bluesky's announcement of their open-sourcing of "Ozone, our collaborative moderation tool... individuals and teams can work together to review and label content", coupled with the ability for people and communities to "run your own independent moderation services, seamlessly integrated into the Bluesky app".This enables &…
mackuba.eu
Another Bluesky guide with "the tips & tricks that I often give to friends when I send them an invite code", including a brief but informative history lesson.Of particular interest to me in early November 2024:"they promise they won’t “enshittify” the service in future... [are] explicitly building the network to be “billionaire-…
www.southernfriedscience.com
Good intro to Bluesky custom feeds on the "Skyfeed ... third party app that helps you manage and organize you Bluesky experience. Within Skyfeed is a custom Feed Builder", which tbh is probably the only reason to use Skyfeed - the interface takes some getting used to.By the time I read this I'd already created my first custom feed u…
plutopsyche.medium.com
An interesting starterguide to Bluesky, written when it was "still in beta... though the application has recently passed 1 million downloads". Some interesting points:culture: "early adopters tended to be people from marginalized communities who were fleeing outright persecution" on other platforms; they all got invite codes &q;…
mathewlowry.medium.com
My late October 2024 newsletter introduces my ongoing work exploring #AI4Communities, and provides some of the resources going into the next version.
www.nytimes.com
According to Mark Zuckerberg, "Consumers no longer control their social-media feeds. Meta’s algorithm... is showing users “a lot of stuff” not posted by people they had connected with... future feeds [will] show you “content that’s generated by an A.I. system.”" Fortunately, "Our legal system is starting to recognize this shift and …
bsky.social
As AI drives a flood of new content, "algorithms to help people sort through information must evolve rapidly" - ie, we need AI to solve AI-created problems.Today's algorithms belong to for-profit platforms, mainly social media, and lack transparency: while you can influence it through who you follow, "your ability to truly cust…
skircle.me
Creates a "Bluesky Interaction Circle... a snapshot of your interactions on Bluesky, beautifully represented in a circle of avatars... the 49 users you’ve interacted with most... you can see which avatars have moved in or out since your last circle, giving you insight into how your Bluesky network is evolving"
blog.elenarossini.com
"Friendica only has about 14,559 total users ... 1692 are “monthly active users” ... [but] Friendica users are incredibly passionate about it... features-rich, unique and brilliant".These include "add and follow RSS feeds and BlueSky accounts", which is enough to pique my interest. Elena Rossini is a new user, so she links to a…
www.blog-pat.ch
"Channels enable any user to create a curated feed with a mix of post type, hashtags, lists, filters and mutes. Customised timelines which anyone can post to via their app or web UI, or by using a dedicated hashtag or emoji."This exists already outside the Fediverse: "The Farcaster app, Warpcast, has a fully formed and fast growing …
www.linkedin.com
One of the snippets from a ZNLive interview I did in December 2023: "emerging social media platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky face a humorous yet real challenge - they're like "Twitter, but without your friends."With the European launch of Threads, the question arises: Can it offer a unique appeal to draw users? Will [they]...…
medium.com
JJ "explore some of the opportunities afforded by the likes of Bluesky, Scuttlebutt, the Fediverse, and Indieweb — not to mention good, old, reliable RSS".Most of the mastodon tips I knew, except: "enable the advanced web interface (it’s like Tweetdeck)" - I didn't know that existed so moved to Tusky and spent my first wee…
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